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I try and go for themes for my characters though, rather than stat builds. Like trying to pick all the glaive skills with an outlander, or favouring skills that centre on the engineers little coal backpack prop.

I think I'm really going to start doing that from now on. I started on it with TL2 before (a Battle Mage, which I think once I get a GPU I may return to eventually, this was just a diversion to test out the game actually worked) and it is quite a fun way of doing it, so long as the option is there for you. So I'm about half of what you've got so far. My engineer, Tara, has spent so long crafting and tinkering that her equipment gives her a bit of a physical edge, however she completely lacks any melee weapon training, so she bears a shield (it's simple!) and a gun. Her abilities will be based off her back-pack equipment (so augmented physicality and electrical doo-dads) and her engineering knowledge; lots of bots, lots of 'strength' (she so far has a shield bash and a foot stomp). I'll probably add electrical and fire damage into the mix where possible. What I am doing though is avoiding magic on her completely. Anything that seems a bit mystical will be avoided, which includes found spells. They will go on Glitch, her pet, who was gifted from a mage friend. That will use magic spells.

We'll see how it goes though! Certainly a little more fun than simply putting points into Prismatic Bolt and buffing elemental damage.

Today's theme is "Where's your floor at?!"

"Go back from whence you came, strange sort-of-existing beast!"

How many polygons does it take to make one, whole, model? More than I have!

Sure, as evil lairs go, it's a fixxer-upper.

Submitting request for more polygons...BLOCKED

As an aside, I recently installed a new theme for Steam, Air. Streamlines it a fair amount, actually seems to be running a bit quicker, but I no longer seem to be able to properly load up images through it. I partially blame Steam anyhow because it's really cumbersome, but when you get to the image page, if you want to load up the pic, it actually comes up with a tab but it's entirely transparent. You can right click it and get the image url, but it's a bit annoying. Makes me wish Steam just made it easier to get the damn link.

Was Playing some Chivalry with the flatmates when we saw something called "laser swords"...

Low Gravity, Star-Wars music that played whenever you were in combat or enemies were near, the proper lightsaber sounds for when you swing, and when you parried, because of the low gravity you would get thrown back.

Decided to use the weekend to indulge in some World of Warcraft. Playing a level 75-80 Rogue means revisiting all those great areas in Northrend, which is always a joy.

Northrend was such a wonderful bit of world building, and they really pushed what they could do with quests in the engine as well. It's a bit weird that it marks the finest levelling experience I had with the game since the 1-60 stretch with a first character, but also the final nail in the coffin for my interest in the end game as it deteriorated into badge farming and raiding Icecrown for something like a year.

Anyway, this prompted me to look through my old WoW screenshot folder which made me feel all nostalgic.

Remember getting ganked by level 60 rogues in Stranglethorn?

Or when Ivus the Forest Lord and all-weekend Alterac Valley games were a thing? Also just look at that magnificently horrid UI.

I can't even remember what this battleground is called, but I loved that parachute jump. All my characters but one had engineering.

World of Warcraft is one of the best examples I can think of of the importance of art style over pure graphical power. It has no right to look that good considering its age, but the world is just gorgeously designed.

Northrend was such a wonderful bit of world building, and they really pushed what they could do with quests in the engine as well.

It's really quite wonderful. I've just reached level 80, and the Cataclysm zones just don't have the same soul to them. At least not for me. They work, sure, but it doesn't feel as coherent or integrated. It probably doesn't help that they had the new zones all scattered around the world, from Uldum to Hyjal, and Twilight Highlands to Vashj'ir.

Originally Posted by Skalpadda

Or when Ivus the Forest Lord and all-weekend Alterac Valley games were a thing? Also just look at that magnificently horrid UI.

Good old CT_Raid! It was one of the first addons that did a decent job of putting all the raid's health bars on screen - but it was indeed quite terrible compared to more current solutions. What can one say about Alterac Valley? It was quite something else. Great times were spend there, no doubt. Especially when it was all still done within your own realm.

Originally Posted by Skalpadda

I can't even remember what this battleground is called, but I loved that parachute jump. All my characters but one had engineering.

Eye of the Storm, in keeping with the style of the Netherstorm zone. The platform from which you started, and which had the faction's fallback graveyard, was lowered in a recent patch. Quite disappointing, especially when you have a Goblin Glider on your cloak, but I suppose people jumping off and starting the battle at half health got annoying after a while.

Originally Posted by Track

World of Warcraft is one of the best examples I can think of of the importance of art style over pure graphical power. It has no right to look that good considering its age, but the world is just gorgeously designed.

Right, especially when you stick to the ground. The limited draw distance of objects etc. starts to hurt the look when you start flying, but overall it's indeed quite great. I still think the newer zones suffer somewhat from being too obviously designed as questing areas, with very clearly separated sub-zones. Either way, I agree that it a lot of the world is very nicely made indeed.

"He has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to
the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free". ~ Luke 4:18

Right, especially when you stick to the ground. The limited draw distance of objects etc. starts to hurt the look when you start flying, but overall it's indeed quite great. I still think the newer zones suffer somewhat from being too obviously designed as questing areas, with very clearly separated sub-zones.

The new zones in Cataclysm certainly felt like they were funnelling you very carefully from objective to objective which wasn't to my taste. I think introducing flying mounts was one of the biggest mistakes they made in WoW. The world felt instantly smaller, it removed any danger from roaming monsters and exploration went out the window when you could just mount up and fly across a zone in a minute or two. At level 60 I was still finding places I'd never seen before, months into the end game.

Originally Posted by Tritagonist

Good old CT_Raid! It was one of the first addons that did a decent job of putting all the raid's health bars on screen - but it was indeed quite terrible compared to more current solutions.

As a contrast, here's a (much) later raid setup. It is pretty weird going through these old screens, spanning across 5 years of gaming and seeing changes in everything from UI to screen resolutions and aspect ratio in the same game.

To the point about exploring on the ground. Flying over the Stranglethorn it looked like a mess of low-res trees. From the ground you'd find some wonderful sights. Also note the old tiling water textures - some things definitely got better looking with Cataclysm.

I unfortunately lost the pic, but I had a great one of my Dwarf on a Talbuk on a cliff in Winterspring before WotLK. I'm glad that my WoW playing time came to an end in Northrend, given how good it looked.

Anyhow, I just booted up Torchlight 2 and immediately had to stop. It's physically quite hard to play the game when the graphics are breaking as badly as they are.

Was Playing some Chivalry with the flatmates when we saw something called "laser swords"...
Low Gravity, Star-Wars music that played whenever you were in combat or enemies were near, the proper lightsaber sounds for when you swing, and when you parried, because of the low gravity you would get thrown back.It's awesome.

The main game appears to be crashing when I take screens at very high resolution, haven't figured it out yet, but this is the tech demo portion of Next Car Game, and now in 4K... yes I was surprised it was running well too :)

Also look very closely at one of the tires in the pictures for a little easter egg :)